In the tenebrous furthest corners of the World Wide Web, an unusual new kind of internet tourism has manifested, and now scholars are trying to understand why.
Made in the likeness of empty spaces that resemble unfurnished rooms, desolate alleys, undecorated corridors, or vacant voids within concrete walls, these out-of-the-way online environments, known as “backrooms,” are becoming increasingly popular online destinations.
These “Backrooms” are the collective product of online communities “legend trippers”—users whose shared experiences through stories, journaling, videos, and imagery, or other forms of creative expression—invite weary internet travelers in for an unusual online experience that serves as a web-based corollary for traditional “dark tourism.”
Now, in new research by co-authors Dr. Sophie James and Professor James Cronin from Lancaster University Management School (LUMS), these liminal areas of the web are being revealed as a unique—and at times unsettling—new kind of online tourism, accessible through immersive digital environments.
A View from the Backroom
“Our research shows that people are increasingly drawn to intense emotional experiences in spaces that are not physically real, but still feel vivid and meaningful,” Dr. James recently explained.
A lecturer in LUMS’s Department of Marketing, James, and her co-author characterize the Backroom phenomenon as what they call “para-terrestrial dark tourism,” a term they use to describe online encounters with non-existent environments that are evocative of being “place-like,” but which exist someplace well outside of any conventional geography.
“The Backrooms demonstrate how digital culture is transforming what it means to explore and to feel present somewhere, while also raising broader questions about how people engage with risk, ambiguity, and the unknown in digitally mediated worlds,” James says.
Backrooms on the Silver Screen
The Backroom phenomenon is likely to garner even more attention, James argues, since it has become the focus of a forthcoming film produced by A24, the American independent film company best known for their distribution of arthouse and cult cinema features, which often feature odd, ethereal, and unsettling themes.
“Our research is especially timely, given the growing cultural attention around the upcoming Backrooms film, produced by A24, which reflects how these once niche internet imaginaries are moving into the mainstream,” James says.
Dr. James and Professor Cronin’s recent study, which was published in Annals of Tourism Research, argues that rather than purely being a source for the accumulation of human knowledge, the World Wide Web is a sort of destination itself.
As such, the internet offers a medium for the growing online communities of legend-trippers, where interactions in Backroom spaces can become participatory, as opposed to simply being online representations of the kinds of “dark tourism” destinations that become the focus of real-world legend tripping.
According to their findings, James and Cronin argue that a broader understanding and definition of what constitutes dark tourism may be required, which moves the concept of a “destination” away from solely being a physical place and instead makes it a part of a more collaborative digital experience.
The recent study, “When dark tourism goes para-terrestrial: Online legend-tripping and touring the void,” appeared in the May 2026 edition of Annals of Tourism Research.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.